Well today I officially “Team-Taught” my first class as CFF coach!! I worked with an English teacher on a project he developed in which he would like his seniors to create a culminating project for the novel “The Motorcycle Diaries”. He outlined in his assignment that he would like the students to use Garageband to make a podcast or Comic Life to create a comic/graphic novel. We worked together on the rubrics for each product (thanks Rubistar). My ‘job’ in his classes today was to introduce the two pieces of software so that the students would have an informed decision about which application they would prefer to use. In searching for resources on the Internet I quickly found a short tutorial video for Garageband and Podcasting, but there was no such luck with Comic Life. So, after spending 30 minutes trying to find something, I decided to make my own! Check it out here…

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/b_83FgdOlM0" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

However as we were going through the classes today, we both quickly realized that other pieces of software could also be used for this project with essentially the same final result. So, I suggested that the students be able to use iMovie, Scrapblog, or just about any application in which students can analyze, synthesize and create. The teacher was very receptive to the idea but seemed a bit hesitant with the software he is unfamiliar with. What was great though was when one student was interested in using Scrapblog, the teacher asked the student if she would be willing to give his classes a quick 5 minute intro/tutorial to the website. He did the same with another student who wished to use iMovie. Kudos to him for allowing the kids to teach the kids!

It’s wonderful to see real project-based, inquiry-based projects going on, and what’s the best- I’m part of the transformation of both teacher and students!!